So Familiar A Gleam
by sylphicaesthete
Summary: Anna always led a simple, isolated life in the forest with her sister. Who is the strange, aristocratic man she meets (surely) by chance out in the woods? Why does he claim to already know her? Pitch has searched for the beautifully bright girl he met once in the dreamscape. Once he finds her, will she recognize him? A Sleeping Beauty au ficlet to accompany some fanart I did:D


"Oh. _Oh!_ " Anna's heart was hammering as she jumped away from the dancing partner she—eyes closed, absorbed in her playing—had just assumed was her animal friends. She glanced to the side and saw the birds and rabbits had abandoned her to sit among the bushes and trees at the arrival of the outsider, leaving her to face him alone. The owl on his perch looked at her very sheepishly, as much as an owl could.

In front of her stood a very tall, grey-skinned man, looking amused at her awkward reaction. His long charcoal tunic made him nearly melt into the forest where the sun couldn't touch him, and his spiky black hair stood in contrast with his pale golden eyes.

Her face blazed in embarrassment when their eyes met. He had seen her pretending to flirt with the owl, she was sure of it. She couldn't seem to run or even move. She was not a reserved girl by any means, but even her voice had disappeared in his daunting presence.

With anyone else, terrorizing someone would have just been another day's work for Pitch, and a pleasure, but not her. The scent of surprise and worry wafted off her like a heavy perfume, though she wasn't truly afraid, thankfully. For months, he had searched and impatiently waited for a chance to meet that brave maiden from the dreamscape in person, the girl whose incandescence shamed the very sunset beside them. Few people had ever looked at him unafraid; certainly, none had ever regarded him with wonder or _joy_ as she had. Until that night, he had not known how much he wanted to be looked at like that.

He didn't want her to leave before they could talk. In her dream, her charm had stirred some strange thing in him he missed; let him return the favor.

"I'm so sorry," the man said, stepping into the dimming light and taking her hand. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

"Oh, it wasn't that." She supposed she should be wary, but there was a pure warmth in his voice that warded away any anxiety she might've had. "Just that you're a… a… uh…" She forgot what she was saying. She was fascinated by how much bigger his hand was than her own, how much its smoky color contrasted against her own peaches-and-cream skin. Most of all, the sense of familiarity from it.

"…A stranger?"

"Mm-hmm." She pulled away her hand and took a few steps back. She wasn't supposed to be talking to him, a stranger, a strange _man_. She shouldn't have let him take her hand and she shouldn't be standing here listening to him. That was Elsa's one rule. Only…

"But don't you remember, Anna?" He gave her a knowing look, almost teasingly. "We've met before."

"We… we have?" She was puzzled now. Elsa had never let her so much as _see_ any strangers passing through the forest. And she never told him her name.

"Of course," he took her hand again, gently puller her a bit closer. "You said so yourself: once upon a dream."

Anna mused over this, studying his face too intensely to think of leaving now. In spite of his otherworldly features, his smile looked so sincere, his golden eyes entrancing. In the sleepy light of the gilded setting sun, they appeared to glow. Some whimsical side of her thought they would be much more beautiful to stare into than the stars she loved gazing at from her bedroom window when she was supposed to be asleep.

Stars. _The dream,_ she remembered unexpectedly. That terrible dream, that nightmare she always had where she was lost in the dark, utterly alone at night. Until one night the man who could move the shadows with graceful composition. He talked to her and listened to everything she held in her heart. He clasped her hand as he showed her the night held more beauty than terror, walking with her under the millions of diamond stars studding the sky's black cloak. After that, her nightmares never came back. Neither did he, and she hadn't known why. The dream had felt so real that his absence afterwards had hurt for a week, but life went on and eventually it had slipped from her memory.

At this realization, her lips curved upward in delight, making his heartbeat quicken. "I do remember you. You made all the nightmares and darkness go away." She squeezed his hand excitedly, awed her shadow king was really there.

"No," he lifted her hand to his lips, relishing the feel of her warm skin, something no dream could emulate. "The darkness will never leave. Not with me. I only showed you the side you'd never seen, in all your light."

A ficlet for a Pitchanna/Sleeping Beauty crossover piece I made for a DeviantArt contest a href=" thenewdorothygale/art/Don-t-you-remember-Anna-We-ve-met-before-763894140" link /a . While I love all the fics and art of Pitch trying to be scary and Anna overcoming it, I love the idea of him not trying to scare her at all when they meet. Here, he's stumbled upon her whilst dream walking (apparently he can do that here :3) and them sharing an enchanting night together. So, he's not sarcastic, mean and antagonistic as he normally is. Enjoy! This is not my first fic, but it is my third ever written, and my first published.


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